It’s difficult study leading intranets without firsthand access to someone else’s intranet. However, our recent webinar, The Best Intranets from the Intranet Global Forum (with Kurt Sorensen, and myself), was a chance for a wide audience (300 organizations worldwide) to see how some of the very best intranets look, operate and achieve success.
Great case study examples from Cisco, CHR Hansen, IBM, SimCorp, Verizon, and more than 20 others were showcased, and examined during the webinar and last month’s Intranet Global Forum conference in New York City. Though many topics were discussed, particularly in the Q&A session following the webinar, time did not provide sufficient room to answer all the questions. Here are some of the key questions discussed, and a few that were asked but not answered due to the ticking clock.
1. How do you affect/change the behaviour of end users (increase usage)?
Behavioural change does not come overnight. It’s particularly difficult to instill such change with employees, who have limited time and interest in the intranet.
For many organizations, an intranet makes a fundamental change in organizational communications, and also, business process. Though the degree of change, and the required change management, depends on the type and culture of the organization (e.g. union or non-union, small or large, etc.) and the intended value and power of the intranet (e.g. self-service, executive communications, etc.), a change management communications program is a requisite for any intranet launch.
Intranet change management becomes an exercise in “selling” or communicating not only the reason and purpose for the change, but especially anticipating and directly addressing the spoken AND unspoken fears (or apathy) of employees.
As I’ve become fond of saying over the years, “If you build it, they will not come.” To build an intranet is not enough to inspire employee use. Like most things in business, the intranet has to be sold and communicated so those employees that are not keeners (or potentially fearful or distrustful of the intranet). Understanding the key elements of a successful change management program will help ensure a successful intranet launch.
Successful change management requires:
- Frequent communications
- User training
- User incentives
- Inherent value
The last point is perhaps the most difficult, should you have a poor intranet: the intranet must demonstrate natural value to the end employee; employees must inherently understand that the intranet is of value to their day-to-day jobs.
Read more: Intranet change management.
3. How to design an intranet for a large enterprise (tens-of-thousands of employees)?
“Be careful that you do not write or paint anything that is not your own, that you don’t know in your own soul.” – Emily Carr, Canadian artist.
A new intranet design or redesign requires a lot of careful user research and user testing if it is to be successful. Do not simply turn an intranet design over to a designer and say, “We need a better intranet. What can you come up with?”
In short, intranet design has very little to do with ‘design’ and should instead be driven by careful user research, requirements and participation. If you know anything about intranets, you know that an intranet is not a website, and employees have entirely different motivations and demands than the public. Employee intranet priority number one is speed; get them to the content or tool they need as fast as humanly possible with as little error and distraction as possible.
The very best intranet designs are clean, uncluttered and support a highly effective and carefully crafted information architecture and navigation structure. Put too much on the home page, and you’ll anger your employee users; put too little on the page, and you’ll anger the same users. It’s a tight rope walk that requires their involvement if you’re going to nail it.
Read more: Intranet Design.
3. How do you address cultural differences for global audiences?
Most large, global organizations now conduct business in one principal language (often it’s English). However, it’s also smart to allow different regions, countries, business units, etc. Conduct business in their own language, where necessary, especially if the dominant tongue differs from the principal language of the company.
The key to success is decentralized content management: centralized content management technology and policy, decentralized content publishing, ownership and management. In other words, the company provides the technology and policy (standards), the writers/owners control the actual words on the site.
Read more: Intranet governance: ownership, management & policy.
4. What’s the best alternative for SharePoint, for a small organization of a few hundred employees?
A home buyer asks a real estate agent, “I want a house: what’s the best alternative to a mansion for a small family like mine?”
The real estate agent responds with 42 probing questions to determine the buyer’s requirements.
Get it?
There is no best alternative to SharePoint or any other technology: there are hundreds of alternatives, and what’s best depends on your particular requirements.
Our approach to complex technologies is rooted in our project methodology of first understanding the client’s needs and particular requirements, and then building plans and designs for those needs and requirement. Once all plans are complete, then the evaluation and selection of technology can begin.
With literally thousands of technology vendor solutions in the market (WCMs, ECMs, CRMs, portal solutions, social media platforms, etc.), choosing the right technology can be very difficult, and time confusing, tiresome and frustrating. It is critical to define and prioritize your requirements, and carefully compare vendor offerings. A solid understanding of your company’s tactical and strategic objectives will help in ensuring a successful technology implementation.
Prescient’s Technology Blueprint service applies our rigorous business requirements analysis methodology and includes user and stakeholder research. For example, we build a complex, detailed evaluation matrix that scores and weighs hundreds of technology, and business requirements (including price, security, organizational culture, etc.). It’s not a small process, and it’s not an easy decision.
Would you spend $50,000 or $500,000 on a new intranet and not spend a few weeks determining your requirements before you looked at potential alternatives to SharePoint?
Keep reading: CMS Blueprint.
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